Kodak's imaging scientists Cindy A. Fitzgerald and John C. Rutter recently presented this technical paper at the IS&T Conference (Society for Imaging Science and Technology) focusing on the importance of archiving your digital assets on film.

Whitepaper Abstract

As described in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences publication, “The Digital Dilemma 2”, an abundance of digitally originated content intended for television broadcast, independent films and documentaries are at risk for being lost due to immediate financial concerns of production and distribution, the long term costs of continual digital migration, or even lack of awareness of the perishable nature of digital content.

Various digital storage media become unreadable as hardware upgrades continue at a rapid pace, often without regard to backward reading capability. This class of content often cannot support the expense of either regular migration to newer media formats or preservation on higher cost black and white separation film.

Film is the only proven archival medium for motion images without the need for migration, accordingly Eastman Kodak utilized a unique and full systems approach to develop a color asset protection film for this at risk class of content.

This paper will focus on the development of this KODAK Color Asset Protection Film 2332 which utilizes common digital post production house devices to record and store digitally processed images for long term preservation. Discussion will focus on formulation considerations to deliver improved dark stability performance while maintaining a significantly reduced cost versus current archival films, system design considerations, color and image quality management, in addition to workflow proposals for present day quality check and future restoration strategies.